The ties that bind the diaspora to Turkey and Europe during the Gezi protests

Abstract

The Gezi Park demonstrations across Turkey in the early summer of 2013 offered another opportunity to examine the role played by social media in a social movement. This survey of 967 ethnic (Turkish or Kurdish) minorities living in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany focuses on attitudes and behaviors alongside uses of offline and online networks to make connections with others during and after Gezi. We investigate whether the respondents living in the diaspora experienced communication-generated social capital. We also examine whether the social capital already built through lives spent in Europe, where connections to majority populations had been forged, was at least temporarily reversed through a process of re-bonding, as ethnic minorities turned their attention and loyalty to the social movement in Turkey.

‘New Wave Turks’: Turkish Graduates of German Universities and the Turkish Diaspora in Germany

“…Third raises questions about technology and diaspora (Oiarzabal and Reips, 2012). Social media have come to reshape the relationships between diasporas and their homelands (Mahmod, 2016;Oiarzabal, 2012), including the Turkish diaspora (Bozdağ, 2014;Giglou et al, 2018). Here, social media allow different elements within the total diaspora to set themselves apart from each other.…”

“…Furthermore, in an age of social media (Bozdağ, 2014;Christensen, 2012), the links between the Turkish diaspora and Turkey are altering. The diaspora is immediately aware of and can engage contemporaneously in political or social events, neither having to wait for the news, nor to wait to make a comment or reply (Giglou et al, 2018).…”

Donating to the fight for democracy: The connective activism of overseas Hong Kongers and Taiwanese in the 2019 Anti‐extradition bill movement

“…Scholars (Lee et al., 2021; Yam, 2020) have highlighted that in the digital age, the role of information, communication and technologies (ICTs) strengthens social ties among network members to access resources and share information. It can also be adopted to facilitate protest participation and shape collective identities and connection actions (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012; Cheng & Yuen, 2020; Giglou et al., 2018). Part of the reason is that ICTs can disseminate movement goals to those who cannot physically participate in the movement.…”

Reading diasporic engagements through the lens of citizenship: Turkey as a test case

“…It also found resonance among Turkish citizens abroad. Formerly distinct diasporic groups and individuals with different ideological backgrounds came together first time in sit-ins and demonstrations that were organised in many capitals around the world and have mobilised in social media to show solidarity with the protestors in Turkey (Baser 2015;Giglou et al 2018). The politicisation and polarisation among external, as well as internal citizens, got a new twist as of December 2013 with the de facto end of the close alliance between AKP and the transnational Gülen movement, that is the Islamist political and social movement active all over the world for more than two decades now, and was one of the main political and economic support base of the AKP (see Tas 2017 for more on this).…”